By Adedapo Adesanya
HP Incorporated has announced the extension of HP Amplify, a first-of-its-kind global channel programme, to its vast ecosystem of more than 1,350 retail partners.
Launched in the fall of 2020 to commercial partners, the new partner programme, built on a single, integrated structure provides the insights, capabilities and collaboration tools needed to drive digital transformation and growth as consumer buying behaviours continue to evolve.
HP will begin to transition retail partners to the HP Amplify program beginning August 2, 2021, and continue through the calendar year.
Built on a simplified and easy-to-navigate structure with two distinct retail tracks (Synergy and Power including Power CDR Retail targeted at retail sub-distributors), HP Amplify is designed from the ground up to turn data analytics into insights that spark new strategies, steer innovation and reward partners for performance, collaboration and capabilities while accelerating digital transformation with insights, building a data-driven culture and augmenting common knowledge with collaboration tools.
Speaking on this, Mr Christoph Schell, Chief Commercial Officer, HP Incorporated said, “For the IT industry overall, and the retail channel specifically, it is clear that business as usual is no longer an option. HP Amplify not only makes it easier for retail partners to do business with HP, but it also provides a clear path, built on a proven framework, to transform their business for today while enabling long-term sustained growth in the future.
“Together with our partner community, we are reinventing how consumers experience our products and services, by investing in our shared capabilities while developing new areas of strength to remain competitive.”
Spurred by rising demand for work, learn and entertain at home products accelerated by the pandemic, the retail industry has experienced an accelerated pace of change.
Capitalizing on the momentum of transformational experiences will be critical to building and maintaining the flexibility that is demanded of doing business today. For the foreseeable future, changes in consumer behaviour will have a greater impact on value in retail than any other single factor.
While in-store traffic decreased, e-commerce sales grew by more than 27 per cent in 2020 and is expected to account for 40 per cent of total sales for consumer-packaged goods by 2025. Trends such as hybrid work, the emergence of the prosumer and continued e-commerce growth are making collaborative partnerships in the retail industry more essential than ever.
With the introduction of HP Amplify, HP is empowering retailers to capitalize on these shifts, arming partners to deliver superior customer experiences and drive future growth.
“Customers are requesting a closer and more personalized relationship with brands,” said Mr Quentin Duminy, Global Buyer at Group Auchan, a leading retailer based in France.
“We will increase our common knowledge of the consumption patterns using data analytics in order to redesign the customer journey, improving experiences online and in-store through HP’s Amplify for Retail program,” he added.
HP Amplify offers a common platform designed to enable progressive go-to-market strategies focused on three core pillars: performance, capabilities, and collaboration.
Building on the success of the HP Amplify framework while addressing the unique needs of retailers, the new program rewards partners for a variety of performance indicators tied to portfolio sell-through and revenue. A structured compensation framework, sales boosters, and other tools help retail partners to assess performance and actions providing clear indicators of success.
Beyond sales revenue alone, HP Amplify measures reward based on new capabilities such as driving data insights, service models, consistent online and in-store experiences.
Strengthening and developing of new capabilities are supported by online digital assessments and recommendations based on core capabilities, consumer trends, benchmarking, and best practices. HP Amplify rewards partners who invest in the capabilities to compete – and win – in a world dominated by e-commerce and digital-led customer journeys.
Transformational change requires collaborative partnerships. Companies that regularly collaborate with suppliers can demonstrate higher growth, lower operating costs, and greater profitability than their industry peers.
Partners that report data will be able to anticipate and enable more positive customer outcomes, ultimately driving sales conversions and maximizing average baskets. HP will collaborate closely with partners to optimize sales through store-level assortment tools and cross-category recommendations to unlock opportunity diversification.
The HP Amplify partner program also provides partners with an optional path to a more sustainable future. Launched earlier this year to commercial partners, HP Amplify Impact is an industry-first partner assessment, resource and training program aimed at driving meaningful change across HP’s three Sustainable Impact pillars – Planet, with an emphasis on climate action; People with an emphasis on human rights and social justice; and Community with an emphasis on digital equity.
The HP Amplify Impact program helps to empower partners to set bold, long-term objectives to drive positive impact. Partners that pledge to join the HP Amplify Impact program will work with HP to assess their own practices while tapping into the company’s extensive investments and initiatives.
Recognized as one of the world’s most sustainable companies, HP has enrolled more than 1,000 partners worldwide in the HP Amplify Impact program, representing a major step forward in the company’s ambitious goal to become the most sustainable and just technology company by 2030.
Aduragbemi Omiyale